Best Orientation of Quickdraws/Biners on Bolts/Ice Screws

I saw that a popular thread (Trends that have fallen out of style) recently headed out on a brief tangent and I thought maybe a dedicated thread about quickdraw orientation might be appropriate. I'm thinking the horse is not yet deceased.

Like most, I learned the basic idea that the quickdraw should be clipped to the bolt so that the rope side carabiner has the gate facing away from your direction of travel. This is to avoid the possible unclipping of the rope side carabiner if you were to fall past it and the rope were to loop along that carabiner just right. I was also taught that it was best to have both carabiners on the quickdraw oriented in the same direction, which I have always done--although the reasoning here was somewhat less clear (biner nose catching on hangar???).

Having said all that, I recently climbed with someone who seems to worry more about how the bolt side carabiner interacts with the bolt hanger rather than how the rope side carabiner is oriented in terms of direction of travel. That is, regardless of which way the route goes, he always clips his draws into the hanger in the same direction. Does he have a point? (for reference, Fixe or Petzl hangars seem to be the most common around here.)

So, some questions to start off the melee...

1) Is there any situation in which you would prioritize how the bolt side carabiner is clipped versus how the rope side carabiner is oriented (related to your direction of travel)? That is, are there certain hangers where the possibility of a biner hanging up on the bolt hanger outweighs the possibility of the rope unclipping from the rope side biner?

2) Is there any situation when you would consider using quickdraws with the carabiners oriented in opposite directions rather than facing the same way? I.e., is it pretty much consensus (and tested/proven?) that the safest orientation is having both biners opening in the same direction?

3) If the climb trends left, but you initially need to make a crux move to the right of the bolt, would you clip the draw considering where a fall is more likely versus the overall direction of travel, that is, with the rope side biner opening to the left? (My hand goes up... I do this routinely.)

4) On the other thread, some ice climbers were discussing some considerations specific to that type of climbing. Anything to that? Say, which side of the screw you climb past? Whether you are left or right handed? Or if there is a full moon? I know nothing about that discipline.

5) I know there have been serious accidents as a result of the rope coming unclipped from a carabiner (see Wayne Crill, 2014)--how many of those accidents involved a sport quickdraw on a bolt (or on an ice screw) versus a flexible sling on trad gear? Or do they both carry equal probabilities?

6) Am I overthinking this? What are the actual chances of the rope coming unclipped (or a biner nose hanging up on the hangar) no matter how I clip my draws or how the biners on my quickdraws are oriented? How often does it really happen? (I'm thinking it is rare, but it apparently happens often enough that I'd like to have a mitigation plan.)

7) Do you regularly carry a draw (alpine or quick-type) with two lockers for situations in which a draw should absolutely NOT come unclipped? Would you consider just clipping two normal draws to the same bolt/hangar? Any other techniques for this situation? (I sometimes do the locker option, or I double up on pro if there is something nearby for placing a trad piece.)

8) In some trad situations, maybe this is another reason to use double ropes?

Have at it! I am hoping to expand my horizons.

P.S. I should get extra credit for writing "oriented" instead of "orientated" (apologies to our Brit friends).

I admittedly didn't make it though all the bullet points, if the route traverses, clip away from the direction of travel, if the route only traverses slightly or is more or less up and down, it doesn't much matter. Yes, almost every manufacturer has switched to facing the carabiners the same direction which is preferred by most people these days. Yes, you are overthinking it.

Most draws that come unclipped got kicked or otherwise jostled during or just prior to being loaded, or were backclipped, or some other underlying factor unrelated to gate orientation. 

In rare instanced I use a locker draw or a sling with lockers on key placements when a fall is likely and failure of the piece would result in a catastrophic fall. Or if some mitigating factor exists, like the draw is likely to get kicked, or the quickdraws sits funny for some reason. You could also oppose two quickdraws on a bolt or piece.

To answer #1, personally no.

The gate can hang up and open on the nut on some bolts, but that is unlikely to happen if you face both gates away from the direction you are traversing.

#2 I'm not sure but it probably matters less than the bolt side carabiner. Id rather have the rope pulling on the spine of the carabiner so given #1 i orient them the same way

#3 it depends on which way the draw is going to get pulled more which is generally the direction you are traversing nearest to the bolt. If you're three feet to the right 20 feet above the bolt it won't rotate the draw much compared to one foot right at the elevation of the bolt. My concern is more about the gate hanging on the bolt or getting it nose hooked than it rotating weird during a fall

If you flip the bolt end biner upside down it is less likly to unclip from the bolt. stacking two draws is not great because it can make the biners load in a bad way.  best practice in a situation where one piece is all you have between certain death or injury is to use a single sling with lockers.  I climb most ice with half ropes so often before a serious crux I  put in two screws and clip one rope to each screw . Perfect equalization and redundancy. 

Nick Goldsmith wrote:

If you flip the bolt end biner upside down it is less likly to unclip from the bolt. stacking two draws is not great because it can make the biners load in a bad way.  best practice in a situation where one piece is all you have between certain death or injury is to use a single sling with lockers.  I climb most ice with half ropes so often before a serious crux I  put in two screws and clip one rope to each screw . Perfect equalization and redundancy. 

Regarding 2 carabiners in a single hanger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yTWcVaCRlg

with real rock you also may have uneven surface that makes just two biners through the same bolt sit wrong. 

Poor bolting aside, i still can't think of a situation where two quickdraws would be worse than one,  typically one ends up taking most of the load and atleast 1 of the 2 carabiners should sit normally,  but as the video shows even the less well positioned carabiner is typically still really strong.  

I climbed a bit with a veteran of runout bolted slabs in J-Tree who taught me all sorts of tricks that I rarely apply elsewhere. One was to use single lockers in place of draws. It's a pretty extreme approach, but my mentor had been around long enough to experience a non-locker unclipped by a fall, and whippers where 6" of dogbone could make the difference between a broken ankle and a gentle kiss of the soil. 

Good one for the bag o’ tricks, Logan. I hadn’t thought of doing that deliberately (maybe because no routes I do these days are very hard or extreme). However, I have used a single locker/biner on a bolt high on a route when I ran out of slings and draws.

I don't think you are overthinking; thoughts are orders of magnitude cheaper than injuries.   Also, it has never happened to me personally but I know several people who have had draws rotate and unclip from the bolt as they climbed past them (usually it is on climbs that traverse a bit).

I do think about how the bolt-side carabiner sits in the hanger and I will occasionally rebuild the quickdraw so that it sits how I like it.  I pretty much only do this for the first bolt on a climb, usually when stick clipping.   Sometimes this makes the act of stick clipping much easier!

Higher up, I am generally satisfied with "spine to the line", but if I can't tell for sure where the line goes (or if I want additional security), I am not too proud to double-up opposite-and-opposed.

I don't routinely rack a locker draw for single pitch sport but I do keep one in my pack for climbs where I have gotten spooked in the past or where it seems warranted from the ground.  If you put an Edelrid slider on the bolt side, you can even stick clip your locker draw into place.

DrRockso RRG wrote:

Poor bolting aside, i still can't think of a situation where two quickdraws would be worse than one,  typically one ends up taking most of the load and atleast 1 of the 2 carabiners should sit normally,  but as the video shows even the less well positioned carabiner is typically still really strong.  

one consideration would be that on the bolt side the spine of one carabiner would/could press on the gate of the other carabiner.  this could happen on both carabiners/sides simultaneously.  the implication here is going from full strength to gate open strength, which is significantly less.  you would have two carabiners at that reduced strength…

i actually use lockers quite frequently and double up sometimes, just thinking of possible situations…